Potty Progress . . And Other Tales From the First Day

Madeleine walked in a made 2 friends immediately.

Ephraim clung to Steven and cried.

Exactly what I would expect.

Ephraim evidently got over it pretty quickly, because when I picked him up, he said he’d had a good day. He told me he needed to go potty, and I started taking him to the girls’ room, but he told me he wanted to go to the boys’ room – by himself. He was adamant that I not go in with him. They have urinals at school, and I guess he’s decided to stand up to pee, because he’s been to the bathroom about 20 times since we got home. He wants to practice standing up to pee in each of our 3 bathrooms!

Madeleine mostly did Kindergarten testing today, which she said “was stuff I already know.” That’s about all I got out of her about academics. She told me all about her new friends, though! I have a feeling she will be just like I was in school – she’ll get in trouble for talking to her friends while the teacher’s talking!

Both kids’ names got spelled incorrectly today. Leave it to me to give my kids names that are hard to spell! I’ve had so much trouble with Karissa you’d think I would’ve learned my lesson! Ephraim’s name is right on all his folders and stuff, but it was wrong on his nametag on his shirt today. Madeleine’s teacher wrote out her name and Madeleine glued Fruit Loops on the letters, but her teacher left out the second e. Oh, well!

My first day was good. It was a half day, so I didn’t pull any kids. I helped around the office and went by classrooms to see who the ELL kids were. I helped calm a couple of crying kindergartners down. One of them is one of mine – no English – he kept saying he wanted his “Mami”. By the end of the day, he had a smile on his face.

It feels weird to not have a class of students of my own. This is the first time in 11 years to not have that. For this job I’ll be seeing small groups of students all day long. I’ll pull kindergarten ELL students for an hour, 1st grade ELLs for an hour, etc. Sometimes instead of pulling them out of class, I’ll “push in” to their classrooms, or go hang out in their classrooms to help them with their work and activities. I’m excited and challenged.